By John Mayaki
Crusoe Osagie has returned to seek public attention and has armed himself with his favourite medical condition which is selective amnesia. Don’t forget that this is a strange illness that deletes the eight-year wreckage he helped supervise but leaves him with bionic eyesight whenever he needs to manufacture outrage against Governor Monday Okpebholo.
Crusoe has written again. He has written another emotional buffet garnished with tribal pepper, served hot from the kitchen of political nostalgia. This time, he attempts to turn routine governance into an ethnic civil war, painting Senator Monday Okpebholo as an enemy of “Benin-speaking Edo South,”. Here is the title of his jejune: “Okpebholo’s Attack on Benin-Speaking Edo South Leaves
Economic Carcasses on His Trail”.
For a man whose political career was built on spinning fairy tales for a former governor, Crusoe seems unable to adjust to the new Edo where facts, not fiction, now drive public discourse. So, he returns to his comfort zone, which is ethnic incantations and hoping to summon sentiment from the graveyard of expired political strategies.
Let me take his claims one after the other and in doing so, I will sprinkle them with logic, marinate and roast them on the fire of common sense.
First, he claimed “Okpebholo is destroying Edo South projects”. Of course, this is the favourite bedtime story of those who believe governance should be a family inheritance. Crusoe lists projects like an emotional accountant tallying imaginary debts. But what he conveniently forgets is that every project mentioned suffered governance issues long before Okpebholo arrived.
Crusoe mentioned MOWAA. This is a museum built with public funds but designed like a private inheritance. Am not sure Obaseki and Crusoe read the piece published by New York Times when they asked: “Who exactly owns this place?” But in Crusoe’s world, asking basic governance questions equals “hatred for Benin people.”
And then, he mentioned Radisson Hotel. Here, contracts were awarded in the shadows, and details hidden under political carpets but we are told to worship it like a sacred relic. No questions because if you do, Crusoe and his ethnic jingoists would blackmail you.
What about Saro Farms? The company that handled the failed Sobe farms that promised to make us ‘agrimillionaires’ but was just another scam packaged by Obaseki and his friends. This company had land disputes everywhere, unanswered questions, and with documents that vanish faster than birds during harmattan. But Crusoe insists all of these must be protected – not because they are transparent, but because they are domiciled in “Benin-speaking Edo South.”
Crusoe is being clever by half. He thought he made a brilliant argument but not knowing that we saw through the lines. Next time, maybe the ‘Pastor’ will tell us rain falls because of tribal bias too.
Crusoe even claimed that “The governor hates Benin people”. Someone said that was a classic ethnic panic button. But I replied him that when someone like Crusoe is unable to win with substance, they retort to pressing “ethnicity” like emergency siren.
And then, he went ahead to mention “Ossiomo Power was crippled”. The fact of the matter is that Ossiomo’s operational issues predate the current administration. The new government simply insisted on regulatory compliance and transparency and these are some of the things that often frighten yesterday’s storytellers like our ‘pastor’.
When people like Crusoe see bold reform and interprets them as “They hate Benin people”, does that not tell you that accountability now wears the garment of tribalism?
This ‘fake pastor’ is not done yet. He mentioned ancestral curses and parables. This of course was when logic failed him and as such brought in ancestors. And again, when facts scattered, he opted for parables.
Crusoe ended his piece with a Benin proverb about plucking out one’s eyes. Ironically, he forgot that he has spent the entire article blinding himself to objectivity. His epistle is not about development but about losing political control. And like a performer who refuses to leave the stage, he uses tribal drumming hoping the audience won’t notice the performance has ended.
All these coming from a man who served as Chief Mythologist under Godwin Obaseki, his sudden memory loss deserves a bed at UBTH. Ask me how? Here are the issues.
While Crusoe now weeps about “attacks” on Edo South, he forgets the academic genocide he and his principal unleashed on Ambrose Alli University. No infrastructure. No funding. No fresh accreditation. No graduates from the medical school. Lecturers sacked like casual labourers.
That’s not all, Obaseki whom Crusoe served blindly also politically motivated “annex” of AAU, created outside Edo Central just to dilute the University’s identity. If governance had examiners, Crusoe and Obaseki would still be in remedial classes.
We all know that Crusoe’s appointment as Special Adviser was built on ethnic gatekeeping, and not on merit. His outrage about ethnicity is especially cute.
We all remember how he became Special Adviser; not by merit, competence, or even luck, but through the ethnic ATM machine he now pretends to despise.
Let’s be frank: If appointments were based on competence, Crusoe would not have smelled Government House.
Today, Crusoe is asking why Okpebholo is “attacking” companies in Edo South. Is Crusoe telling us that Obaseki intentionally centralized everything in one zone while leaving? And that Obaseki intentionally starved Edo Central economically and Edo North ignored? Of course yes. A case in point was when Obaseki built Benin Technical College and avoided the one in other places. We know bigots when we read them and Crusoe is the ‘chief mourner’ here. When they are failing and drowning, they resort to ethnicity.
While Crusoe screams apocalypse, Okpebholo is busy doing the work: Two giant flyovers in Edo South – one in Sapele Road and the other in Ramat Park. These are the biggest Benin has seen in decades. They are being constructed by the same man Crusoe claimed is destroying Benin economy.
Investments are entering Edo South at record speed and this is including Presco’s $100m reinvestment. But according to Crusoe, these facts don’t matter. I know Crusoe is not happy that cultism has crashed and killings drastically reduced in Benin city. He is blind and cannot see that Federal roads in Edo South are being fixed. These are the same roads Obaseki abandoned with “it’s not my job. Blame the federal government”.
“Okpebholo is destroying the economy of Edo south”, according to the ‘fake pastor’ but he donated ₦2 billion to UBTH, the same institution that is located in Edo South. What about the road leading to Obaseki’s own village? It is now under construction, something Obaseki never attempted. But it doesn’t matter to Crusoe because he blinded himself as a ‘chief mourner’ who must deliver the message like a slave. I guess Crusoe’s amnesia has apparently spread to both retinas.
But again, let’s not forget that Crusoe defended Obaseki’s hostility to Benin institutions and political elites such as former Deputy Governor, Dr. Pius Odubu among others and even clashed with the Benin Palace and Crusoe defended every punch. But now, suddenly, he wants to be the ‘chief mourner’ of “Benin interests.”
Again, here is the mathematics Crusoe is avoiding – he has refused to count the number of commissioners from Edo South in Okpebholo’s government? It is either he has and that he knows the truth but like the ‘devil’, he is terrified for saying it. Okpebholo gave Edo South more representation than Obaseki ever gave his home zone. But accepting that truth would collapse Crusoe’s ethnic thesis, so he chooses calculator blindness.
And so, Crusoe’s article is not near what we call journalistic analysis. It is simply a grief note from a man whose political influence expired last year and seeking to reinvent same. His sudden love for Edo South is not patriotism but post-tenure heartbreak dressed in ethnic masquerade.
Here is the truth: Okpebholo is building. Obaseki demolished. At least Okpebholo is building a Benin man’s hotel that was demolished by Obaseki. Besides, Okpebholo is uniting. Obaseki divided and still busy doing same even on the global stage. Let me add that Okpebholo listens. Obaseki lectured. And threatened. And no amount of selective amnesia can erase these facts.
This ‘fake pastor’ has however succeeded in promoting ethnic division and misrepresented governance issues as tribal war. He has also undermined the peace-building efforts of the Governor and the Oba of Benin and went ahead to misinform the public and fueled unnecessary tension.
For instance, when a ‘pastor’ uses inflammatory, divisive, and dangerous languages designed to provoke ethnic suspicion, you immediately know it is Crusoe Osagie. Phrases like “destroyer-in-chief”, “bull in Edo’s China shop”, “hate for the Benin-speaking Edo South”, “economic buccaneer”, “ancestors who support destruction” – these string words are a direct incitement and unbecoming of a true child of God, who should edify, unite and preach peace. Besides, a responsible writer or journalist avoids fueling ethnic tension in a multi-ethnic state like Ours.
Crusoe’s article is not journalism. It is a political obituary soaked in ethnic perfume. But Edo people are wiser. They know real development when they see it. They know tribal incitement is the last refuge of failing political merchants. And most importantly, they know Edo has moved on. The people have moved on. But nobody is advising Crusoe to move on and to also upgrade his political software because the ethnic version he is running stopped receiving updates in 1999. Crusoe should upgrade.
